Microsoft defends Kinect pricing

"You only need one thing, you do the maths"

Microsoft's Brett Siddons believes that Kinect for the Xbox 360 is very competitively priced, pointing out that you only need to buy one thing to get the complete experience.

The Xbox 360 Kinect price point, which is a penny under £130 (there's also an Xbox console bundle priced at £250) has raised eyebrows.

But group marketing manager Siddons, speaking at the Kinect stand at an Amazon event, told TechRadar that people should 'do the maths' when it came to counting exactly how much people fork out for the various devices to play similar games on the likes of the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation's Move.

Perspectives

"The price thing itself depends on how you look at it," said Siddons "It's £129.99 RRP but it comes with a game within that price – so Adventures will be packed in with the camera.

"If you buy it with the console which normally costs £149.99, [the package price is] £249.99 with the Kinect and the games – another 100 pound on top.

"The camera tracks six people – with two active gamers – you don't have to buy anything else.

You do the maths

"I'll let you do the maths but when you say Nintendo Wii or PlayStation Move you buy this and this, even for a two player games.

"What do you need and what do actually have to spend for a two player game for this device versus that device. You actually find that [Kinect] is very competitively priced."

We do the maths - PlayStation Move

When you look at the RRPs, Sony's pricing for Move is a basic pack for £49.99 consisting of the PlayStation Eye Camera, move controller and a demo disc with various games.

Should you want two Move controllers and two of the nunchuk-like Navigation controllers then you would have to fork out £39.99 [CORRECTION £34.99] for the former and £29.99 [CORRECTION £24.99] for each of the latter.

That's a total cost of [CORRECTED] £135 – which does at least bear out what Microsoft is saying – although Sony might well be offering as yet unannounced packages at a later date.